After a few questions, he asked me to pass the phone to the receptionist, and told her to send me to his office in the hospital penthouse at the top floor. The meeting lasted just over 15 minutes. He was really business-like. I had hit on his VERY exposed "felt-need" nerve. He asked to see the demos of past projects I mentioned. I showed him the "Cash Inflow & Outflow Tracker" I built for business centers and the "Restaurant & Bar Manager". Those two were apparently enough to convince him.

Next thing I knew, he took me to a computer used by his assistant, and called up what turned out to be a number of manual MS Excel workbooks used to manage their Cash Books for various purposes (tracking receipts and payments for the main hospital, and also movements to/from the different bank accounts). He told me he felt - from looking at what I had already done - that I would be able to help them automate their manual Excel Cash books to make them (as his Medical Director would later say) "more friendly".

"So how much will it cost?" he asked(a question that often tells me the prospect is to be taken seriously). I told him. We negotiated and came to a compromise. Then he ended the meeting by asking me to send in my proposal with a quote. I did that a day later, and went on to other business marketing tasks with other prospects.

I did NOT hear from him for nearly two months subsequently.

Some weeks after my last meeting with the accountant, my other marketing efforts led me to win a project to build an automated records management system for a hotel, which involved working with the hotel account and the auditor to build an automated Cash Book that generated a trial balance etc.

As I approached completion of the hotel project, I called the Hospital accountant to inform him that I had since gone on to build an automated cash book for another client. (I often do this to help clients move closer to taking the decision to buy, as it gives them more verifiable PROOF to assure themselves that I can deliver a solution that meets their needs). He told me they had someone who was working on an alternative, and as such he would only call on me if the alternative did not work. I thanked him and ended the call.

Three weeks later, I got a call from him on my mobile. He said "Mr Solagbade, this is..... from .....hospital. We want you to come and build the automated cash book we discussed about. When can you come and pick up your cheque?"

I went on to build a fairly different type of cash book from that used by the hotel, to match the format used by the hospital's accounts department. But the logic was still the same, so I was quite at home with it.

Note: On 5th Feb. 2007, I won a much larger paid project with another Lagos hospital by using the above cash book for my business marketing demo to them. I was engaged within days after my first meeting/demonstration to build a custom automated Excel-based software to handle this hospital's general accounts preparation from cash office receipts to year-end Profit and Loss reports/balance sheet auto-generation.

How The Auto-Cash Book Works: Click here to read though the browser based user guide I created for users of the hospital's cash book. It provides screen shots of various parts of the program to facilitate comprehension. You can fill/submit a request to download - and test run - a demo version of the program.

Article Update: On 12th March 2007, I got a call from the accountant of another large hospital to pick up a 100% advance payment cheque to build an automated cash book(and a Payslip Generator) for his department. This made it the third time in 2007 that I would be asked to build this kind of application for a hospital here in Lagos. Each time I have used the more recent version to "sell" my services to the next prospective client.

Tayo K. Solagbade - 7th April 2007

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